https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qI4LzGKQm3GwO3iyY5amjYbddSrMEr20ip22KGLBtzU/edit?usp=sharing
Project 2 Final Essay
Final Draft
final project
Amanda’s team final draft
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17eDXSViJqy-IvysGGLNvkM_Zmcvm6SrVQyvCBr1qwI0/edit
Amanda Jiang & Leah Schreffler
Dr. Randall Cream
Writing 120
3 November 2019
Teaching without teaching
Good quality teaching involves interaction and socialization between students. A good professor takes time to connect with the student’s background and needs. The teacher builds a relationship with the student. At West Chester University, the education system does not do this. In Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” and Paulo Freire’s “The Banking Concept of Education”, they address the current issue that is affecting the education system. Freire explains the problem of the banking concept of education. This means that teachers feed information to students and they absorb it like robots. This way of education does not teach students. West Chester University is a victim of this way of teaching. Every class teaches this way and it only hurts the students more than it helps. Walker Percy has similar views as Friere. He talks about educational content as a “package” and explains how students do not gain or learn anything by this way of teaching. This is a massive problem in the education system that has been around for decades, but both authors believe there are ways to change. Both authors talk about how students do not learn from the teacher, they learn from each other. Creating a learning environment where students are not taught by the teacher allows for a different way of learning. One class that West Chester offers is HEA 110 Transcultural health, a class where teachers teach students as passive objects. Students are fed information and are expected to memorize everything instead of comprehending it. This class is a prime example of how a class should not be taught according to Percy’s and Freire’s ideas. We believe good teaching can happen at West Chester through trial and error, observation, students teaching students, and mock trials.
In Freire’s “Banking Concept of Education”, Friere talks about how teachers teach in a way where students are fed information like robots. This way of teaching is completely wrong. “Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than a medium evoking the critical reflection of both teacher and students. Hence in the name of the “preservation of culture and knowledge,” we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture” (Friere 4). Learning should be a way where students create knowledge and culture. West Chester University is teaching students the way Friere and Percy say it does not work. Most are familiar with the saying you learn from your mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable but you will eventually learn from your mistakes, leading to the solution. This method of learning is trial and error. Trial means the practice of different strategies to find a solution. If the trial is fawlty and does not create a solution, a new method is to be tested until a solution is reached. Trial and error is used in problem solving. Problem-solving can be used in HEA 110 as a new way of teaching. This creates a change of teaching. The teachers create different scenarios where the students have to act out the scenarios and try to find the best solution of the problem. The teacher will create scenarios where the students have to discover how to treat a patient who has barriers of communication and beliefs. The students in the classroom will act out the scenarios and have other students watching, leading to student feedback. This feedback will critique the way the student treated the patient, eventually leading to the correct way. Having students give feedback to other students will help them learn the right and wrongs of how they performed and approach their scenarios. Learning the correct way to treat minority groups in the health care system will benefit the students in a new way of learning.
One way to implement good teaching at West Chester University would be for teachers to ask students to teach themselves through observation. Activities, where students observe information outside of the classroom, allows for comprehension and an advanced way of learning instead of being fed information. By doing observation activities, students are open to new creativity and opportunities that are provided. A quote from Percy states, “…that they have in common the stratagem of avoiding the educator’s direct presentation of the object as a lesson to be learned and restoring access to sonnet and dogfish as beings to be known, reasserting the sovereignty of knower over known” (Percy 5). Percy explains that the only way a student can learn is by avoiding the teacher’s way of teaching. When students are assigned readings or video assignments, they do not learn as much compared to going somewhere and observing. Students only focused on watching videos and answering given questions rather than understanding the true concepts. Learning outside the four walls of the classroom can significantly improve a student’s academic and developing environmental awareness. By assigning observation assignments beyond the classroom allows students to think outside of the box. This allows students to take the chance to explore and expand their critical thinking. Observation gives students an understanding of the outside world. In HEA 110, students will have assignments to visit specific companies or areas where people with different cultures visit for health care. Observing a real-life interaction gives the student experience and understanding of the world. Observing something like this teaches the student so much more than a lecture ever would. In conclusion, Students can not learn from the teacher and have to discover other ways of learning.
A new way of changing the way students learn is by having the teacher creates activities that will make students teach students the information. College is all about training students to be future leaders and for this to happen, students have to recognize that they have a voice and an opinion. Speaking for yourself is a hard thing to do and learn. Having interaction in the classroom and in the criteria of the course will allow students to learn to become involved in the class. Students take information from other students and begin to understand different views of things. Seeing the bigger picture of the outside world creates an opportunity for students to seek the moment, creating a new way of learning. “No, but it means that the student should know what a fight he has on his hands to rescue the specimen from the educational package. The educator is only partly to blame. For there is nothing the educator can do to provide for this need of the student. Everything the educator does only succeeds in becoming, for the student, part of the educational package” (Percy 5). Percy is saying that the students have to create their own ways of learning because the teacher is not there to provide the students what they need. The problem with traditional teaching was that teachers feeding students the information and they absorb it. Students teaching students is not the traditional way of learning. Having students teach other students allows for a better connection because there is no higher authority over the students. They are all equal to each other and because of this equality, they will listen to each other. Having this change helps students to focus and begin to learn a different way.
The final way good teaching can happen at West Chester University is through the way of mock trial. Having a teacher read about the content is not the same as having the content shown to you. A mock trial is an imitation trial and problem-solving skill. Problem-solving is another way students create self-learning. In HEA 110 at West Chester University, having mock trials in the classroom creates a real-world scenario that the students can observe and learn from. This mock trial can be created by the teacher. Students will watch and comprehend what is happening. This idea is generated through the computer. The students will observe the scenario and comprehend the material that is provided. Teaching this way changes the atmosphere of the classroom. Teachers do not teach the students directly, they teach indirect. Teachers teach students without teaching. This way of teaching allows students to obtain knowledge instead of memorization. Overall, professors feed information to students and expect them to memorize information instead of comprehending the material. A teacher has to let students discover and create their own critical thinking. By setting an environment where students use their own knowledge to observe and process further thinking leads to independent and social work skills. Learning from their experiences rather than given to them opens up their capability of becoming a better thinker. Having students explore not only outside of a classroom but different methods in the academic course can develop complete understanding. By having trial and error, observation, students teaching students, and mock trials at West Chester University only improve student’s learning skills.
Johnson and Nolan Final Project 2
Final Draft: Project 2
Michael Tresoikas
Randall Cream WRT 120
16 November 2019
Student Learning at West Chester University
Almost every student has encountered troubling times in his or her life where they have challenging periods or have had a difficult time grasping the information presented by the instructor. This is due to the structure and functionality of our educational system. Our education system is set up so that students follow the directions of the teacher and receive points. They are supposed to learn from experiments and work that is based off of an expected outcome that every student should understand. In reference to Paulo Freire’s readings “The Banking Concept of Education,” he believes that students are just taking information from the teacher but not really learning anything in return. In reference to Walker Percy’s readings “The Loss of the Creature,” he states that as humans we have lost our jurisdiction but we are able to gain it back through certain ways. To both Freire and Percy, this is not learning by any means, following directions and listening to the teacher is just good listening skills and the student does not gain any knowledge from the presence of this work. Therefore, the only outcome that students can acquire knowledge on their own instead of being educated by the standards of the academia system, is to actually be the teacher and the tourguide to their own route on the path to learning successfully. Having other resources for students to learn outside the classroom will only help in the aid of their learning including biology labs, doing field work by getting out to nature preserves, using programs like Khan Academy, and giving and getting help through student led tutoring sessions.
As a biology major, a student must take 9 biology related classes, bio 110 being one of them. Course 110 consists of learning about the smallest units of life which are cells to bigger units of life which are plants, animals, and humans. Students will look at plants and animals in detail, learning about the process of reproduction and how organisms obtain food. This course challenges students to learn the basics of biology so that students can take that information and grow each semester that they take a biology course. Taking this course, students will learn about the processes in biology and what it will take to earn an A in the class.
In creating labs the students can dissect specimen that vary every time a student dissects it. Students will go to lab each week, doing a different dissection every time. They will use their scientific knowledge to inspect and dissect items that will be placed in front of them. Students will go through their specimen taking notes, writing down differences, major findings, and the overall look of the item. When dissecting items like cow eyes or animals, this will help aid in learning growth because the animal specimen is the instructions and the student has ample opportunities to do what they choose with the animal instead of following rules. Doing these labs will prepare the student for any biology related questions and will give students many opportunities to learn and ask questions. Percy references “A young Falkland Islander walking along a beach and spying a dead dogfish and going to work on it with his jackknife has, in a fashion wholly unprovided in modern educational theory, a great advantage over the Scarsdale high-school pupil who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk,”(Percy pg 4) in which he states that the young islander has the upper advantage over the student. As for the islander, he is teaching himself and is learning through experience with cutting the fish. The islander has no instructions, but only his bare hands to help learning through hands on experience.
Alongside the labs, the students who are taking bio 110 can progress much faster if they get out of the lecture and start doing field work on nature preserves. Therefore the students who go to the nature preserves will in return learn more than the students in lecture by actually putting themselves in the first person POV. Students will be going to the nature preserves and will get to witness the true essence of the biology of plants and animals. They will take note of the different organisms that are around because each organism is different depending on the area. They will write descriptive summaries of what they are witnessing and take pictures to identify what they are seeing and to compare it to other organisms. Getting the students out of the lecture and letting them experience things for themselves will be of great value and only help to grow their learning capabilities. Percy believes the role of the teacher is important but he wants students to try others ways to learn; he wants students to learn by going off the traveled road or the standard. Taking the less traveled path helps you gain more knowledge about the different perspective of learning that comes with hands on experience because everytime you see a plant or animal, most likely both will be different and the student will have to use their brain. If a teacher were to ask what a certain plant is in the wild, the student will most likely get it right from studying or if they get it wrong, it is only a learning process and will remember it next time. In reference to Percy he states “ The pupil at Scarsdale High sees himself placed as a consumer receiving an experience-package; but the Falkiand Islander exploring his dogfish is a person exercising the sovereign right of a person in his lordship and mastery of creation” (Percy pg 4). In reference to this quote, Percy states that students do not learn from sitting and listening so they must exclude themselves from the existing educational ways and become a teacher learning through experience like field work so that they have a full understanding of the topics.
Next students can use learning such as, out of class electronic resources like Khan Academy in which students can watch videos, play learning games, and get tested on the information they know. In reference to Percy, having Khan Academy helps the student become independent from the teacher and allows the student to take back their learning rights, “The thing is twice lost to the consumer. First, sovereignty is lost: it is theirs, not his. Second, it is radically devalued by theory” (Percy pg 6). This activity is dependent on the student and the ease that they can access or exit this program at any time. Khan Academy will help the student due to the easily accessible website and by this fun way of learning. Students will use Khan Academy to visually see helpful techniques to aid them in the study of Biology. First they will create an account through the website, then students will watch videos on specific topics including processes like cellular respiration, cell division and to fully grasp the topic that is being focused on. Students have access to thousands of videos depending on the topic and lesson that are there to help the student grow. They will sign on whenever they need to answer questions, try experiments, and to challenge themselves with Biology. If a student has to learn a certain topic, he or she can learn at their own pace and on their own time, taking their learning capabilities into their own hands. In doing so, the students emancipate themselves from the teachers, creating their own responsibilities and taking education and turning it upside down. It will take the student, and make the student the teacher as referenced by Freire “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire Page 1). Freire along with Percy believe that the student needs to become emancipated from the old ways to actually grasp learning thoroughly and to fully understand what learning means to every student, not just what their told to learn.
Lastly, students can take part in student led tutoring sessions which are outside the classroom and involve the same material as the classroom. They will take the initiative to teach the curriculum that is taught in biology classes. Students will switch each week from teacher to student because most of the learning will be received when the students are teaching. These sessions will happen after every class so that the information is still fresh in the students mind. The sessions are there to help the student teach, which will help to increase the knowledge potential of the student. In doing so, they will be able to understand the subject or topic in a different way from the lecture. The sessions are a voluntary decision but will help boost the information and the confidence in the student. Every tutoring session will be different depending on the lesson, helping to enhance the knowledge of the student. According to Percy, “(There is always, of course, the direct recovery: A student may simply be strong enough, brave enough, clever enough to take the dogfish and the sonnet by storm, to wrest control of it from the educators and the educational package)”(Percy pg 5), Percy touches on the basis of this idea that a student can remove themselves from the traditional education system. When they do that, they create a new way of learning in which the student is teaching and retaining more information rather than sitting and taking in information from someone else. This involvement will help the student become a teacher because of the new knowledge that they are gaining.
In conclusion, students may take the initiative to do what they can do to emancipate themselves from the old ways of our education system. Having students do something other than lecture will help tremendously because they will be the ones doing the work unlike lectures where teachers tell us information to learn. Students will be doing biology labs where they can dissect animals and specimen that will be different every time. Going and seeing the plants and animals at nature preserves, doing work and watching videos on programs like Khan Academy, and having student led tutoring sessions. In doing so, students will prosper with the new learning ways, having the students take the stand and do experiments and be the person to make the instructions will be a big asset to the student in the world, only raising our students up to be confident and passionate leaders.
Final Draft Writing Project 2
Julia D final draft
Final Paper Project 2
Final Draft- Emilys Team
Final essay project 2
Final Writing Project
Final WRT Project 2
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xPpG7fwizCETU0p9T1yVcxrcvPy68UwkBKCY_Ndvn4s/edit?usp=sharing
Sean Redding
Randall Cream
WRT120
November 7th, 2019
Final Draft
No matter where you reside, the criminal justice system is a prominent feature in each and every community in the United States. There is a vast amount of job opportunities in this field, from police officers, judges, and probation officers to FBI agents, blood spatter analysis, and criminal behavioral analysis, criminal justice jobs are a key component to any working society. As a criminal justice major, it’s hard to choose just one field to go into, and even harder to obtain all of the skills needed to go into the criminal justice fields. Luckily, our community has many opportunities for interactions that can help with this specific major. Students might be able to go on a ride-along, have internships, study the local news for crime in the area, and even sit in the local court room during open case trials.
As stated by Freire, “One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.” (Freire, Ch.3). I believe that this quote is suggesting that one cannot expect to excel in a certain field if they only focus on the core requirements of the major but will succeed if they are familiar with other elements in the major. Specifying this concept to a criminal justice major, something like a ride-along, or internship specific to a criminal justice student’s field of interest would be beneficial to their overall goal. By doing an internship, students are able to be placed in an environment similar to the real-world experiences outside of college. Internships would be a preparation for life outside of college, especially when it comes to criminal justice majors. Being prepared in the criminal justice field is important, as many jobs in this field require a vast knowledge of the job and subject before entering.
Another concept that relates to knowledge outside of a specific major comes from Walker Percy’s theories and works on education. Percy says, “A student who has the desire to get a dogfish or a Shakespeare sonnet may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the educational package in which it is presented” (Percy, pg.4). In this quote Percy was stating that a student who is strictly restrained to the limits inside one specific major may have the most difficulty excelling in the major. For a criminal justice major, there are many very simple ways to explore and to get in touch with the community in order to benefit in their majors. One way could be simply to stay updated on criminal justice related news in the community. A student could learn a large amount about what a criminal justice job would be like in a specific community by familiarizing themselves with the typical happenings of the community itself. By learning and getting familiar with the typical issues and crimes in a certain area, students can prepare for what they would be dealing with after graduating and entering the criminal justice fields. If a student were looking to become a police officer in Philadelphia, reading Philly’s local news and seeing about the many on-foot chases officers in Philadelphia have to partake in may lead this student to conclude that they must work on being physically fit for that specific job. This would then put them ahead of a student who did not have this knowledge and had the same goals.
Another way a criminal justice student can learn outside the classroom is participating in a “ride-along” with officers in the local police department. Participating in a ride-along is definitely a great learning experience for those students who would like to experience the day-to-day activities of a police officer’s duties before committing to the job. During a ride-along, the student would be allowed access to sit in the passenger’s seat of a police vehicle and ride with an officer to see what police officers really encounter. Students in Criminal Justice that want to go into the police force can request to do this with local police departments within the community. In doing this, the student can get a taste of what it is like to be on the force and see what police officers actually do on a daily basis. Freire stated, “The solution is not to integrate them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become “beings for themselves’” (Freire, p. 2). In this quote Freire talks about how education can often lead to oppression, and that the way to succeed in education is to have students experience things for themselves. By participating in a ride-along, students definitely are breaking away from the educational oppression that Freire speaks about.
A huge influence and factor in every criminal justice system is the court. The court system is a way for citizens who may have committed minor violations to explain themselves and have chances at redemption, but also allows for criminals of society to stand a fair trial. All crimes committed in West Chester go through the Chester County courtroom, which would make the court room a great place for criminal justice majors to get a deep understanding for crimes and violations in West Chester. Students are able to sit on any open court case, and in doing so, can definitely learn a lot about the crimes in a certain area. Not only would students be able to physically observe and study the typical crimes through the courtroom, but they can also recognize the ways that judges may handle certain situations. Knowing how crimes and violations are handled in certain areas and societies is a huge part of understanding the society itself. As Percy states, “The great difficulty is that he is not aware that there is a difficulty; surely, he thinks, in such a fine classroom, with such a fine textbook, the sonnet must come across” (Percy, p.4). I believe that in this quote, Percy is stating that students have difficulty in certain fields because they simply do not understand the difficulty in the subject and do not go above and beyond outside of the classroom in order to understand their said topics. For example, students that simply show up to class, take the tests, and leave may be worse off than students who had taken advantage of their resources. Those students who had taken advantage of their resources would then be more experienced in the field, as they had already had the chance to explore, understand, and experience the subject first-hand.
In conclusion, criminal justice majors have many hidden advantages in society, as they are able to acquire skills and excel in their fields just by examining their community. Students may take the opportunities to excel by participating in internships, a ride-along, physical research of a society’s crimes, and sitting in a court room during open-case trials. Not only do these activities allow students to gain knowledge on crime topics, but these also allow students to experience criminal justice jobs first-hand before graduating. With that being said, it is more important than ever for students to realize the importance of research and internships, as they can gain a vast amount of knowledge by participating in said activities and gain the upper-hand on those who have not had these experiences, as criminal justice fields can prove to be extremely competitive. Once students realize the sheer importance of these activities, students will excel and succeed in the criminal justice world.
Nik Passias Final Draft
Project 2 Final Draft
Project 2 final essay
Project 2 final submission
Project 2 Final Submission
Final Project
Meghan Kidd and Samantha Pawluczyk
Randell Cream
Writing 120
08 November 2019
Teaching Without Teaching
In “The Loss of the Creature,” Walker Percy explains how the most effective way of learning is through the process of indirect learning. Students grasp a stronger understanding to the topic when there is an active discussion in the classroom, rather than having their professor lecture at them for the duration of the class. If a professor wants their students to truly learn a subject, they will try to create different ways of challenging their students into learning the topic inside and out. For example, at West Chester University, Microeconomics 112 is a three day class per week and consists of a teacher lecturing to the students for a fifty minute period. What if the agenda of the course changed: Mondays would be a standard lecturing day, Wednesdays would be an open discussion group with prompts created by the students themselves, and Fridays would be dedicated to fieldwork outside of the classroom. Requiring students to teach others outside of the classroom, lead class presentations inside of the classroom, partake in fieldwork once a week to give them real experience, and have a group discussion in the classroom weekly are all ways professors can help the students to learn without being taught.
The main goal of each professor is to have their students to understand their topic, to the best of their abilities, for the specific class in which they are taking. One way of indirectly teaching their students, the economics professor could design a mandatory project where students are required to teach at least three other students about their major. By doing this, it helps the student to learn the topic more because they will need to be able to break it down and explain it. Students will be instructed to get into groups where they will do a pair share activity which will assist them in understanding the topic. Each week, the groups will rotate in order to allow for different interactions between the students. When the students are put into groups, they will have the ability to voice their own opinions as the professor walks around to ensure that all students are giving input and hopefully earning more knowledge than they had before. With this assignment, students will work to ensure they know the subject inside and out because they will have to teach it to students who do not take an economics class at all. The goal of this is to teach the economic students how to break down the information and explain the topic to someone who knows nothing about it.
Aside from teaching students who do not take economics, another method teachers could use to intrigue the students in class is to have student-led classes. In order to be most efficient, it is recommended by the professor to work in groups of three or four. As students work in groups, this allows them to bounce ideas off one another which helps to indirectly teach each other. This course will be held three times a week and with that, there will be allotted time for each student group to lead a lesson at the beginning of each class. The groups will be in a rotation so each class has a new group presenting a lesson for about 20-25 minutes. This amount of time gives the students the ability to teach their lesson but enough time for the professor to give a revised lesson to the class. In Percy’s article he explains, “If we look into the ways in which the student can recover the dogfish (or the sonnet), we will see that they have in common the stratagem of avoiding the educator’s direct presentation of the object as a lesson to be learned and restoring access to sonnet and dogfish as beings to be known, reasserting the sovereignty of knower over known.” Here, Percy explains the idea of sovereignty and how it is the surrender of power to the experts. This connects to this idea of student-led lessons because the professor is surrendering his position in order to give that same power to his or her students.
Additionally, each week the students gather in a classroom on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the early morning hours at 8:00am to learn about their intended course, Microeconomics 112. However, the question is, how much information are the students really absorbing during that time? This class is fifty minutes in length and consists of a group of thirty students that have grown tired due to the fact of an early morning class and a professor that lectures to them the whole time without holding any type of conversation. Therefore, every Friday class should be dedicated as a fieldwork day. If the students are given one day each week to have hands on learning in economics, they might be able to learn more because of the interactions they will be having. For example, in the beginning of the year the professor will have each student pick a local businesses in town to study how the store measures their supply and demand and other factors that keep the company in business. Additionally, they will be able to talk to the workers at the store and ask for advice about their future and their potential career in economics. In addition, the students will have to get a weekly form signed stating that they were present for an hour at the business of their choice to ensure that they were of attendance.
Furthermore, one last method that would indirectly teach students more about their subject would be to have weekly discussions between the students. The most effective way of holding these discussions would be to have a standard lecture on Monday, followed by the group discussions on Wednesday. The professor would give a certain amount of information on Monday and students would be required to come up with at least three questions regarding the lecture. This would help to get the students more involved in the lectures rather than going to class and zoning out. Students would have to submit their questions on D2L so when they arrived at class, they would be ready to go through the list of questions and converse. The benefits of this method of learning is to have students answer other students questions and teach one another. The professor would sit in on this discussion and chime in if there were any major questions to avoid getting off track. This is an effective way of learning because it is a form of teamwork which helps each student get a better understanding of the class.
Learning effectively in the classroom is sometimes hard due to some students just sitting at their desks inattentive and unfocused, while their professor is in the front of the room throwing words around that come natural to him or her, but are unknown to the students. However, if the students are required to teach others outside of the classroom, lead classes inside of the classroom, partake in fieldwork once a week to give them real experience, and have an open group discussions so that they have the ability to actually learn the subject. By changing the layout of the class schedule, students are being given the best possible foundation to succeed. Students are the future and should be given the best possible teaching methods to prepare them for their upcoming careers.
